The Bible in 3D

Today Thanksgiving means family, a lot of food, football, and maybe an argument at the table. But Thanksgiving is a civic holiday with a foundation older than any of that: thanking God. In this special episode, Andrew traces where the holiday really comes from.**The law of Moses.** People have always brought offerings to their gods, sometimes to appease them and sometimes to say thank you. Under the law of Moses, Israel brought sacrifices to cover sin and also to give thanks for a harvest or a child. Part of the offering went to God, part to the priest, and part came back to the worshiper, who celebrated with a feast.**Medieval feast days.** The medieval church gave saints feast days, often paid for by wealthy patrons or trade guilds as an act of penance. For the poor, those feasts were a lifeline in hard times. They also became known for drunkenness and immorality, and the Reformers replaced them with days of prayer and fasting, followed by a shared meal of thanksgiving.**The Pilgrims.** The Separatists crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower and landed at Cape Cod in November 1620. Many died that first winter. With help from the Wampanoag, who were seeking allies against the Narragansett, they brought in a harvest, and in 1621 they held a feast of thanks to God that the Wampanoag joined. Andrew also sets the record straight on King Philip's War fifty years later, when Native nations and colonists fought on both sides.**A nation gives thanks.** England declared a day of thanksgiving after defeating the Spanish Armada in 1588. Washington and the governors called for days of thanksgiving during the Revolution, and after Gettysburg, Lincoln proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving in 1863. Later, FDR moved the date to give shoppers more time before Christmas.The common thread is giving thanks to God for bringing us through hard times. So this year, at some point around the table, let someone thank God for your blessings, whatever your situation.A Thanksgiving special from The Bible in 3D.The Bible in 3D is a Christ-centered Bible teaching podcast from Cogworks Media, hosted by Andrew. Find more shows and ways to give at cogworksmedia.org. Cogworks Media is a 501(c)(3) public charity, and gifts are tax-deductible.Music: The Epic Hero by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/

If the covenant of Moses is no longer in effect, is God finished with the Jewish people? And does His plan for Israel mean Christians owe unconditional support to the modern state of Israel? In Part 2, Andrew sets the Mosaic covenant beside the new covenant and the covenant with Abraham to answer both questions from Scripture.**The Mosaic covenant.** Made with Israel through Moses at Sinai, it was conditional: blessing for obedience and curses for disobedience. It was never meant to be permanent. No one could keep it except Jesus Christ, and it pointed forward to Him.**The new covenant.** Jeremiah foretold it centuries before Christ (Jeremiah 31:31–32), and Jesus inaugurated it at the Last Supper: "This cup is the new covenant in my blood" (Luke 22:20). Hebrews explains that the old covenant is now obsolete and its sacrifices were a shadow of the reality, Christ. On the cross He said, "It is finished." Salvation is offered to Jews and Gentiles alike through the one mediator, Jesus Christ.**God is not done with Israel.** Daniel 9 decrees seventy weeks for "your people and your holy city." Sixty-nine have passed, and the seventieth is still to come, a time when God turns His focus back to Israel and leads to their recognizing Jesus as Messiah. Paul confirms it in Romans 11: God has not rejected His people, a partial hardening has come until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in, and His gifts and calling are irrevocable.**What that does and doesn't mean.** Andrew rejects replacement theology, the idea that the church has permanently replaced Israel in God's plan. But the promises were made to a covenant people, and the modern political state is not in covenant with God, so Scripture gives no command of unconditional political support. What it does command: pray for the peace of Jerusalem and the salvation of the Jewish people, and reject antisemitism.He closes with a word on Christians who choose to observe parts of the law of Moses. There's no requirement to, but a Messianic Passover can deepen our understanding of sacrifice and the new covenant.This concludes the two-part look at Old Testament covenants and promises.Part of the Hot Topics series on The Bible in 3D.The Bible in 3D is a Christ-centered Bible teaching podcast from Cogworks Media, hosted by Andrew. Find more shows and ways to give at cogworksmedia.org. Cogworks Media is a 501(c)(3) public charity, and gifts are tax-deductible.Music: The Epic Hero by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/

The covenants and promises of the Old Testament were made thousands of years ago, yet they sit underneath what is happening in the Middle East today. Andrew opens this two-part Hot Topics study with a pattern he has seen many times: people who leave the faith they grew up in, and the few who feel guilty about it and go on to attack it. He then looks at three ways Jewish thinkers tried to argue their way out from under the covenant of Moses, with its blessings and curses.**Sigmund Freud.** Near the end of his life, the father of psychoanalysis claimed that Moses was really a priest of the Aten, the single god of the pharaoh Akhenaten. Andrew tells the story of Akhenaten, his abandoned capital at Amarna, Nefertiti, and the boy king Tutankhamun, and points out the problem with Freud's theory: later pharaohs erased Akhenaten so completely that a century later no one would have known what to borrow from him.**Immanuel Velikovsky.** Velikovsky granted that Moses existed but not that God did. In Worlds in Collision he argued that a body thrown off by Jupiter, which later became Venus, passed close to the earth and caused the plagues and the parting of the sea.**Arthur Koestler and Shlomo Sand.** The third approach questions descent itself. Sand, a historian at Tel Aviv University, challenged the idea of a mass exile after the Bar Kokhba revolt. Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe argued that Ashkenazi Jews descend from the converted Khazar kingdom. If you are not descended from those who swore to the covenant, the argument goes, it doesn't bind you.**The covenant with Abraham.** Andrew sees the Mosaic covenant as temporary and fulfilled in Christ, but the covenant with Abraham in Genesis 12, 15 and 17 as everlasting, and that includes the promise of land from the Nile to the Euphrates. Who are Abraham's descendants, and what does that covenant mean today? Those questions are why this is still a hot topic.Next time: how Christians should evaluate the covenants with Abraham and Moses, and what, if anything, we owe the modern state of Israel.Part of the Hot Topics series on The Bible in 3D.The Bible in 3D is a Christ-centered Bible teaching podcast from Cogworks Media, hosted by Andrew. Find more shows and ways to give at cogworksmedia.org. Cogworks Media is a 501(c)(3) public charity, and gifts are tax-deductible.Music: The Epic Hero by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/

Who is the great prostitute riding the scarlet beast? In the final part of the series, Andrew follows one of Revelation's most shifting symbols to its end, then steps back to the great white throne, the new creation, and what Jesus Himself told His disciples about His return.**The great prostitute and the scarlet beast.** In Revelation 17–18 the woman is first a great prostitute, then Babylon the Great, then the one who sits on seven hills, the familiar description of Rome. Yet when she falls in chapter 18, she looks like a great port city, and everyone weeping over her is involved in commerce. Andrew suggests the change is deliberate: the prostitute is the economic system, and it sits on top of Satan, who has ruled through one great commercial city after another. In the end, all of it comes down.**The end of the story.** Chapter 19 brings the wedding feast of the Lamb and Christ's return on a white horse. In chapter 20 Satan is bound for a thousand years, the beasts are thrown into the lake of fire, and after one final rebellion with Gog and Magog, Satan follows them. Then comes the great white throne, where earth and sky flee away and nothing is left to rebuild. Those who are not saved must give an account before the living God.**The good news.** The saved stand instead before the judgment seat of Christ, where rewards are given for faithfulness (2 Corinthians 5:10; 1 Corinthians 3:10–15). Then God makes a new heaven and a new earth, and His people dwell forever in the New Jerusalem.**What Jesus said.** In the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24–25), the disciples ask three questions on the Mount of Olives. From Jesus' answers, Andrew draws seven points: Jesus is coming again; no one knows when; we are to watch faithfully; His coming will be unmistakable to everyone; believers will be evaluated for rewards; the wicked will be judged before the great white throne; and a seventh, more disputed question about what the world will be like when He comes and how we should prepare.That last question isn't settled by any chart or date. It comes down to how we use what God has entrusted to us, so that we hear Him say, "Well done, good and faithful servant."This concludes the four-part series on Revelation.The Bible in 3D is a Christ-centered Bible teaching podcast from Cogworks Media, hosted by Andrew. Find more shows and ways to give at cogworksmedia.org. Cogworks Media is a 501(c)(3) public charity, and gifts are tax-deductible.Music: The Epic Hero by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/

Seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls. Are there 21 separate judgments in Revelation, or seven judgments told three times? In Part 3, Andrew turns from how we read Revelation to the shape of the narrative itself.The cycle of threes. Semitic writers often say the same thing three times, adding or stripping away detail with each pass. In Job, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar make their case in three rounds, each shorter and weaker until Zophar doesn't speak at all, showing that their argument collapses. Peter's vision of the sheet comes three times before he goes to the house of Cornelius. Jesus says "love your enemies" three ways in Luke 6.Seals, trumpets, and bowls. Read this way, the three sets of judgments are the same seven seen from different angles, growing worse each time: a fourth of the earth, then a third, then "It is done." That's why the mountains and islands can flee more than once, and why the battle at Armageddon in chapter 16 and the rider on the white horse in chapter 19 may be one battle told twice.The interludes. Between the judgments come words of encouragement. When the mighty hide in caves asking "who can stand?", chapter 7 answers with the 144,000 and a great multitude from every nation. Chapters 10 and 11 bring the little scroll and the two witnesses, raised after three and a half days. Andrew connects the seven-sealed scroll of chapter 5 to the book Daniel was told to seal until the end.The spiritual battle. Chapters 12–13 show the dragon, the beast of the sea, and the beast of the land, and the mark of the beast. No one knows for certain what 666 means, but the mark can only be taken willingly, and the angels of chapter 14 warn: don't take it.Like Daniel's visions, Revelation was written to give hope. Terrible times are coming, but God's people will come out on the other side.Part 3 of a four-episode series on Revelation.—The Bible in 3D is a Christ-centered Bible teaching podcast from Cogworks Media, hosted by Andrew.▶ Subscribe for teaching that takes Scripture seriously🔗 More shows and ways to give: cogworksmedia.orgCogworks Media is a 501(c)(3) public charity — gifts are tax-deductible.Music: The Epic Hero by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/